Kansas City, Mo.-based Dean Machinery recently relocated its headquarters to a new 25-acre campus that is centrally located to the four corners of the Kansas City metro. RER's Brandey Smith recently sat down with company president Lori Dean to discuss the state-of-the-art facility’s green construction and how the move positions the Caterpillar dealer and Cat Rental Store well for future growth.
RER:Tell me about the new headquarters location — why you decided to build it and about all of the green construction elements that you put in place.
Dean: The project came about over a period of 20 to 30 years. We added onto our other facility three times. We added bay space, we added office space, we added parts warehouse space and we were at that building for 50 years. We finally said, ‘This is just not working for us. We can’t take care of our customers the way that we really want to take care of our customers.’
We had our welding capacity in one of our service bays. We had a track press in one of our service bays. We had parts cleaners and washers in space that could have been used for repairing equipment. We had hydraulics rebuilding in space for repairs — it was all taking up service bay space. And we said that really isn’t what is going to be needed for us to grow this business in the future. So we started looking at the timing for this; what we would need by the way of facility size; what were the things that worked about our existing facility; and what were the things that didn’t work about our existing facility — really doing an analysis of it.
At the time that building was built, our location was easy access off the highway, it no longer became that with the development of Kansas City around it, so we decided we needed to move out and to get easier access. We needed, of course, a much larger site. We wanted a larger capacity to take care of more equipment — all of those things that you would expect a business to want we wanted.
This is in a great location. It’s very easy to get to.
It works out really well. And one of the big things too was economics. For the size of land that we were going to need it was going to be a lot of money. We were on about 12 acres where we were. This main parcel now is about 25 acres and then we have another 10 acres to the west of us that we have under contract. We asked ourselves, where are we going to find a place where we can just afford the land cost and then you have to throw building costs on top of that, so we looked at the parameters — where was the city growing, what was our territory and we decided this location really made a lot of sense.
For our truck engine business it’s right off of I-70 and the major truck traffic off I-35 can pick up I-435 and go around. Its 10 minutes off of I-70 so it’s easy for our truck customers to get to us. It is, with the expansion of Kansas City and the area southeast, easy for Blue Springs, Lee’s Summit, and all the growth there to get to us. It is also accessible for Independence, Mo, and the area up North. It is a bit of a challenge for people on the West, but we are taking care of that by increasing the amount of parts drops so that our customers don’t have to come all the way over here. We think this is a great location. We wanted to stay in the central part of the city so that it was easier for all four corners of the city to get to us.
Tell me about the green building initiatives.
The site development was huge because of the way the site drained off. We started the green aspect of it from the minute of doing the grading and soil work. We took fill from the Grandview Triangle as they were rebuilding it and put it on this site and let it compact for a good six months and that started the whole green initiative from the very beginning.
Then we started planning how to heat the building, and deciding what were the green elements that made sense within our operations. So, from a heating capacity we collect and burn about 20,000 gallons of oil from our customer machines every year. We’re using that to heat this building. Actually we’ve been doing waste-oil heating for many years, way before it became popular. We have a computer-controlled environmental system, so when an overhead door is raised it shuts off the air conditioning so that we’re not cooling the outside; we’re maintaining the temperature in here.
We, of course, have to clean our equipment so we clean it before it comes into the shop because we don’t want to bring the contamination into the equipment and hydraulic systems. We continually reuse that wash water. We clean out the big dirt and then filter it to separate the oil from the grease and then we take that oil and burn it in our waste oil heaters, and then the dirt goes back into the mud pit and it’s used to test the machines, and we continually recycle that water through clean filters.
We have recycle bins for paper at every single work station. We recycle everything we can, including bottles and paper. We also have metal recycling for pieces that come off the machines. We have a closed loop chiller system that enables heating and air conditioning of this whole system. So once you prime it with water you don’t ever have to fill it again. And we have a generator on site; we’re part of Kansas City Power & Light’s MPower program. What that means is we have a back-up generator and, should the electricity go off, we have the ability to produce our own electricity, but by agreement with KCP&L, they give us a certain amount of notice and we turn on our generator and provide electricity for them and our electric meter goes backwards because we’re providing power to the grid. It’s a Cat generator and we have it switched with Cat gear. So we’re really thrilled about all of that.
All of our light fixtures are the high efficiency fixtures. We have all the restrooms and spaces that we possibly can set on automatic on/off so the lights don’t stay on if nobody is in them. We have water for the faucets and the toilets on automatic sensor so nothing stays on unless it has to stay on.
We are attempting Silver LEED certification by the U.S. Green Building Council. We have everything insulated in the shop and two layers of metal siding so our R factor is very high. The exhaust from the machines goes through a whole system that routes it outside. You might think ‘what does that have to do with the environment?’ But if you darken that roof, you just reduce the reflective capability of the ceiling, you become darker, darker, and darker and you need to get more light power to get the light down to the level where the techs can work.
We have a whole system of hoses at each service bay that are connected to master tanks for filling fuels and fluids in the machines. No longer do we have to have separate roll-around tanks that can have potential spills, so it’s all in a master tank farm, which is much better for the shop around here. It also reduces safety accidents because we don’t have to worry about oil coming out of those barrels that are being rolled around.
I know that Dean Machinery is a family-owned business, has this always been your career path?
Yes and no. When I was a little girl and my dad brought my brothers and sisters and I down here, we did whatever little kids do running around a business — mess with the telephones, and I got bored and started picking parts in the parts warehouse. And so I said as a little girl that I would come and run the machinery business one day. I worked here in the summers and worked while I was going to college and at one point left and decided to go work in the hotel business. I started working at what was then the Alameda Plaza Hotel on the Country Club Plaza, which is now The Intercontinental, and when the Plaza flooded Sept. 12, 1977, that was my first night at the front desk. It was quite a wild night.
I ended up working my way up and transferred to the Rafael in Chicago as front office and accounting manager, so I worked in the hotel business for 8 years. And then came back into the family business to lead a computer conversion because I had done a computer conversion in the hotel. The rest, as they say, is history.
I left for three years to go finish some school and worked my way up, and in 1999 was general parts manager, in 2000 was vice president of operations, and in 2001 executive vice president and general manager. So I’ve been running the business since ’01.
Tell me about how your experience has been shaped in the construction equipment/rental business because you are a woman.
My personal belief, overriding anything else, is that in order to run a business you have to be a good business person. I don’t call out the fact that I am a woman. I want to be known and treated as a good, smart business person. If I can’t make it running this business that way, then I’m not sure I should be running this business at all.
My dad has been gone for years now and everybody asks ‘What would he have thought about this?’ and I think the very first thing would have been about money — ‘You spent how much and you put what in that thing and why did you put that there, and you could have done this over here…,’ and he would have started picking it like crazy, but I think at the end of the day he would have been really proud.
What has customer response to the new facility been?
They’ve been really thrilled by it. They knew that we had trouble getting enough machines in to take care of them fast enough so now we have much faster response time and they like that a lot. I think they like seeing that where they take their machines is a good, clean, new shop.
Our people have really great pride in this facility and it’s coming out even more in the work that their doing on our customers’ equipment, so all around, everything I’m hearing is great. Customers like the access. For them to try to maneuver around the old building was a really big problem. They like that it’s easier off the highway; they don’t have to get off I-35 and then onto Southwest Blvd. and then up, so they like that. Of course the ones on the West are a little bit concerned, but I think we’ve got that taken care of.
What are your growth plans for the future? Are there any plans to open any new branches or to further expand in any way?
Not right now. When I took over the business in 2001 we had five locations, we now have 11, so I’ve been expanding the business since I took over and we have updated every single facility we have. We built a brand new shop in Sedalia, Mo., in 2001; we built a brand new building in Olathe, Kan., in 2000, so right now we don’t have significant plans. More than anything else we’re going to be taking a look at the market. We need to go where the business goes and so to the extent our business goes we need to have a presence there. Who knows what happens in the future. rer